Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Series Number 110)

This book argues that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches, it is a comprehensive analysis of religion’s evolutionary significance, and its inextricable interdependence with language. It is also a detailed study of religion’s main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions that we take to be religious and therefore central in the making of humanity’s adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from a range of disciplines. Table of Contents......Page 10 Foreword Keith Hart......Page 15 Preface......Page 22 1 Introduction......Page 25 The evolution of humanity......Page 27 Adaptation......Page 29 The symbol......Page 31 The great inversion......Page 33 The lie......Page 35 Alternative......Page 41 2 The ritual form......Page 47 Ritual defined......Page 48 The logical entailments of the ritual form......Page 50 Ritual and formal cause......Page 51 Form and substance in ritual......Page 53 The first feature of ritual: encoding by other than performers......Page 56 The second feature: formality......Page 57 The third feature: invariance (more or less)......Page 60 The fourth feature: performance (ritual and other performance forms)......Page 61 The fifth feature: formality (vs. physical efficacy)......Page 70 Ritual as communication......Page 74 Self-referential and canonical messages......Page 76 Symbols, indices, and the two streams of messages......Page 78 Appendix......Page 82 3 Self-referential messages......Page 93 On levels of meaning......Page 94 Variation and indexicality in the Maring ritual cycle......Page 98 Index, icon and number in the Maring ritual cycle......Page 101 Natural indices in the Maring cycle......Page 104 Ordinal and cardinal messages......Page 106 Quantification and the substantial representation of the incorporeal......Page 108 The digital representation of analogic processes......Page 110 The binary aspect of ritual occurrence......Page 113 Ritual occurrence and the articulation of unlike systems......Page 121 Ritual occurrence and buffering against disruption......Page 125 4 Enactments of meaning......Page 131 The physical and the meaningful......Page 132 Speech acts......Page 137 The special relationship between rituals and performativeness......Page 139 Ritual’s first fundamental office......Page 141 Acceptance, belief, and conformity......Page 143 Performativeness, metaperformativeness, and the establishment of convention......Page 148 Ritual and daily practice in the establishment of convention......Page 150 The morality intrinsic to ritual’s structure......Page 156 Ritual and myth, and drama......Page 158 Ritual as the basic social act......Page 161 5 Word and act, form and substance......Page 163 Substantiating the non-material......Page 165 Special and mundane objects......Page 168 Acts and agents......Page 169 Predication and metaphor......Page 171 Ritual words......Page 175 The reunion of form and substance......Page 176 The union of form and substance as creation......Page 179 Ritual, creation and the naturalization of convention......Page 188 6 Time and liturgical order......Page 193 St. Augustine, St. Emile, time and the categories......Page 194 Temporal experience and public order......Page 199 Succession, division, period and interval......Page 201 Temporal principles......Page 205 The grounds of recurrence......Page 212 Schedules and societies......Page 214 The temporal organization of activities......Page 217 Regularity, length and frequency......Page 220 Sequence and space......Page 233 Time out of time......Page 240 Tempo and consciousness......Page 244 Tempo, temporal regions and time out of time......Page 246 Frequency and bonding strength......Page 249 Coordination, communitas, and neurophysiology......Page 250 Eternity......Page 254 Myth and history......Page 257 The innumerable versus the eternal......Page 258 8 Simultaneity and hierarchy......Page 260 The Yu Min Rumbim......Page 261 Language and liturgy......Page 275 Analysis vs. performance......Page 277 Ritual representations and hyperreality......Page 281 Mending the world......Page 286 The hierarchical dimension of liturgical orders......Page 287 Sanctity defined......Page 301 Sanctity as a property of discourse......Page 305 The ground of sanctity......Page 307 Axioms and Ultimate Sacred Postulates......Page 311 Sanctity, heuristic rules, and the basic dogma......Page 314 Sanctity, unquestionableness, and the truth of things......Page 317 Divinity, truth, and order......Page 321 The truths of sanctity and deutero-truth......Page 328 10 Sanctification......Page 337 Sanctified expressions......Page 341 Falsehood, alienation, sanctity and adaptation......Page 343 Major variations in sanctification......Page 348 Sanctity, community, and communication......Page 350 The sacred, the sanctified, and comparative invariance......Page 352 11 Truth and order......Page 368 Logos......Page 370 Logoi......Page 377 12 The numinous, the Holy, and the divine......Page 395 Religious experience and the numinous in William James, Rudolph Otto, and Emile Durkheim......Page 398 Order, disorder, and transcendence......Page 405 Grace......Page 406 Grace and art......Page 408 Ritual learning......Page 412 Meaning and meaningfulness again......Page 415 Belief......Page 419 The notion of the divine......Page 420 Illusion and truth......Page 423 The foundation of humanity......Page 428 13 Religion in adaptation......Page 430 Adaptation defined again......Page 432 Adaptation as the maintenance of truth......Page 434 Self-regulation......Page 435 Religious conceptions in human adaptation......Page 438 The structure of adaptive processes......Page 443 The structural requirements of adaptiveness......Page 446 Hierarchical organization of directive, value, and sanctity......Page 449 Sanctity, vacuity, mystery, and adaptiveness......Page 451 The Cybernetics of the Holy......Page 453 The natural and the unnatural......Page 462 Sanctity and specificity......Page 464 Oversanctification, idolatry, and maladaptation......Page 465 Adaptive truth and falsity......Page 467 Idolatry and writing......Page 468 Sanctity, power, and lies of oppression......Page 470 Breaking the holy and diabolical lies......Page 471 Inversion in the order of knowledge......Page 473 Humanity’s fundamental contradiction......Page 475 Dissonance between law and meaning......Page 477 Post-modern science and natural religion......Page 480 Notes......Page 486 References......Page 523 A......Page 543 C......Page 544 D......Page 546 F......Page 547 H......Page 548 J......Page 549 L......Page 550 M......Page 551 O......Page 552 P......Page 553 R......Page 554 S......Page 555 T......Page 557 W......Page 558 Z......Page 559 Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.